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Arras said:At best, he referred to himself as the "son of man."

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""Jn.10:30: " I and my father are one" this is not a numerical one, Jesus is not saying he is the father. they are not one person but in nature they are a united one. It actually reads we are one in Greek the first person plural esmen . Examining his claim further "I and my Father are one." The Jews pick up stones because they understood this as blasphemy in vs. 36 Jesus interprets what he meant by saying because I said, "I am the Son of God." There is a very good reason for this because…. Contrary to those who claim the Son of God means less than God it actually affirmed his deity.

In Jn.20:17 Jesus said "I am ascending to my Father and your Father to my God and your God." Anti-Trinitarians claim since Jesus had a God over him he could not also be God. What we are not saying is that he is the Father or the Spirit. Coming in the servant role and as a man he was submissive to the Father as a Son. Notice he makes a distinction from "my Father and your Father" not saying our Father. The same is applied to " my God and your God." As a man he acknowledged the Father as "my God" .We are unable to say this in the same manner as he did. God is his Father from eternity past, he being the Son of eternal generation. Thomas bowed before Jesus saying, he is his God and his Lord, Jesus could not say the Father was his Lord in the way man does.

Jn.11:41-43 Jesus lifts his eyes toward heaven and prays, " I thank you that you heard me, and I know that you always hear me." We see consistently he is praying toward heaven just like all the saints in the O.T.. So why pray if your God. Because he is dependent on God in his lowered state and he is giving us the perfect example of our having a relationship with the Father. The Son was instructed by the Father as his God, since he decided not to use his position independently. Jesus never referred to his Father as "our Father" in prayer together with others. Father was a term for the Jews who were in covenant with God . Jesus who being God in nature was divine and equal in all respects to God could not call God his Father as we do, being adopted children. God was his Father in a different sense than ours, in that they were united together from eternity. So he makes a distinction of "my" and "our". " "When Christ prayed to the Father, you have the Son on earth the Father in heaven. this is not separation but divine disposition. now we know that God is within the depth's and exists everywhere, but in might and power, the Son being, indivisible from the Father is everywhere with him, yet in the economy, the Father willed that the Son should be found on the Earth, himself ( the Father ) in heaven." (Tetullian.) What he is explaining is that the omni-presence of God is everywhere yet the location of his persons are in different areas. ( Jn.11:41-42,12:28, 17:1-26)""

Jesus is not the Father so how can he be God ?
http://www.letusreason.org/Trin6.htm

John Chapter 10 for more detail (see vs. 27 ff)
http://scriptures.lds.org/john/10/16

Hmmm. Maybe a difference without distinction. 'Ye are gods'... Anyone with knowledge of Judaic interpretation and scripture references here feel free to jump in. Psalm 82 : 6 , Genesis 11 : 7,

""7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.""

"us" ? Huh ?

Edited by EVDebs (06/10/06 08:01 AM)

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EVDebs said:
Hmmm. Maybe a difference without distinction.

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From the Wikipedia:
Much of the debate hinged on the difference between being "born" or "created" and being "begotten". Arians saw these as the same; followers of Alexander did not. Indeed, the exact meaning of many of the words used in the debates at Nicaea were still unclear to speakers of other languages; Greek words like "essence" (ousia), "substance" (hypostasis), "nature" (physis), "person" (prosopon) bore a variety of meanings drawn from pre-Christian philosophers, which could not but entail misunderstandings until they were cleared up. The word homoousia, in particular, was initially disliked by many bishops because of its associations with Gnostic heretics (who used it in their theology), and because it had been condemned at the 264-268 Synods of Antioch.

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What we have, then, is a Bible that has been subject to a great deal of interpretive and translational meddling over the years, and crafted to suit the wills of powerful individuals. Councils, synods, and other groups have periodically assembled to decide what the "official" position of the Chuch is on one matter or another, and these influences have found their way into subsequent versions of the text, as translated by the scribes of the Dark and Middle Ages. A scribe performing a translation in 600 A.D. very likely interpreted the text somewhat differently from a scribe of 400 A.D., because of different prevailing decrees at the time.

It's no surprise, then, that modern versions of the text make "Son of Man" and "Son of God" functionally equivalent--that has been the official position of the Church since the Fourth Century. Through selective editing (e.g. choosing the gospels that supported this position and omitting those that did not) and biased interpretation, we're reading Constantine's Bible. We know that "heretical" scriptures did exist--Constantine's order to burn them, and the more recent discovery of the Gnostic Gospels and Dead Sea Scrolls corroborate this--and that the Bible might well have been quite different if it had had a different editor.

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